Downward Spiral
by Caseyrocksmore
Summary: Their relationship, or whatever it was, was doomed from the start. It might've started on a high note, but it was all downhill from there. Grace/Parker
1. Before

_Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own ideas. Some content in this fiction is not child-friendly (hense the "Teen" rating), so proceed with caution.  
Summary: Their relationship, or whatever it was, was doomed from the start. It might've started on a high note, but it was all downhill from there.  
Parker/Grace, because we all know that there is more there than just hate, or there _was_. It had to have stemmed from some pace of betrayal and pain... this is my take on how it happened. _

* * *

_**Downward Spiral**_

"Parker Selfridge, Junior Administrator. And you are...?"

The redhead, who was several years older than the new Junior Administrator of the RDA, barely even glanced up from her microscope. She made an annoyed noise at the back of her throat, her hand quickly scrawling a few sentences of neat script onto her notes.

"Doctor Grace Augustine," she said, pulling herself away from her work for a moment to give the young man a good once-over. "_Head_ of the Avatar program." She shuffled her papers around a little, hoping the guy would take a hint that she was busy and leave. He did not, however, do that, and she glared at him in the way that only an Augustine could.

"I've just been appointed to head the _entire _operation," he announced, grinning like a child. Grace rolled her eyes and continued to collect her work.

"What happened to Dunn?" she asked, only vaguely concerned for her would-be boss. Everyone knew that she was in charge, and that included Kurt Dunn, the old _head of the operation_.

"He blew his brains out."

That made her pause. Dunn had been a Junior Administrator, too, before he broke under pressure. They had been preparing to send him back to Earth to get psychiatric help. He obviously hadn't made it to cyro.

"Too bad," Grace grumbled, sharing a moment to curse the awfulness of the world. She had had Dunn so well trained, and now she would have to start all over. Dunn had known his place: to make pretty little reports for the RDA, send back some shiny little rocks, go to sleep. This guy looked eager, which meant he was going to start changing things. Damn the unfairness.

Grace walked over to a different desk, practically shoving an ambient lab tech out of her way in order to take his place. She looked up at Parker briefly before setting down her work and putting pen to paper again— if she wanted to have this book published before she died, she would need him to go away. He was a distraction. "Why are you still here?"

Parker shifted uncomfortably. "Well, according to the guys upstairs—" Grace had no doubt about the dumb corporates to whom he was referring. "—you've been on Pandora the longest of anyone. I figured I would come down and eh..." He paused and Grace rolled her eyes. How hard was it for a man to ask for help?

"Ask me to show you the ropes?" she suggested, shoving the rough draft of her book into a file and tossing it aside. No one would dare touch it, less they get their eyebrows burned off with acid whilst they slept.

Parker smiled boyishly, a habit that he would later grow out of. "If you wouldn't mind," he agreed, and Grace sighed, shoving her chair back a few inches and standing up again. She was taller than Selfridge, and she liked the visual advantage.

"Alright," she said with false enthusiasm, deciding that maybe getting in good with the guy who was going to be deciding her program's budget wouldn't be a half-bad idea. Getting off on the wrong foot with Dunn (calling him a Neanderthal hadn't been the best idea) had made life a little harder at first, and with the first draft of her book still on shaky ground, she needed all the advantaged she could get.

"Great!" Parker said, still smiling that adorable little smile. "I have some great ideas for this place. There's this site that we're working on, Site 53, and if we cleared out some of the trees between Hell's Gate and there, we can build roads that will facilitate moving mining equipment, as well as the load itself once we're done—"

"How fascinating," Grace agreed, internally rolling her eyes. This guy had a _lot _to learn about the Na'vi, apparently. They weren't just about to let him cut down their forest, but perhaps it was best for him to find that out the hard way. A learning experience. "And just how do you plan to do that?"

* * *

"Stupid blue monkeys," Parker groaned, banging his fist down on his desk. He hadn't really had time to decorate in his first week— the place still looked almost exactly as Dunn had left it, with little knickknacks and heirlooms crowding the space he was supposed to be working on. His fist came down again, knocking a snow globe to the floor. It cracked, spreading water and glitter across the surface. "Damn it!"

A knock on his door made him pause. He looked up and saw Grace Augustine; the fiery Avatar driver standing in his doorway with her hands on her waist and one hip cocked to the side. She was wearing an amused little smile, her eyes sympathetic but her stance made her look tough, aggressive. It was one hell of an image.

"Aw, did the road plan not work out?" Grace's sarcastic tone did not go over Parker's head. Her made a face and bent down to retrieve the fallen snow globe, tossing the leaking item into the wastepaper basket beside his desk.

"You _knew_ my plan would fail!" he accused, pointing at her and frowning. "Here I go, extending the metaphorical olive branch, and you knew it was the wrong one, and you _still_ let me. Why?"

"Taught you a lesson, didn't it?" Grace shrugged, sticking her hands in her pockets and leaning against the door frame. Parker's face fell.

"Yeah, well, now I've got half a dozen miners in the medical bay. That's on your head, not mine." He paused, shaking his head. "You don't know anything about me, Augustine," he determined, grabbing a tissue from one of the many boxes Dunn had left lying around and tossing it onto the little puddle of glittery water on the floor.

"Maybe I don't know anything about _you_, Selfridge," Grace countered, not moving an inch at the accusation. "But I know the Na'vi. Conversing with them is _my _job, not yours. If you would have let me ask them first, there wouldn't have been any confrontation at all. And that _is_ on your head."

"I know," he sighed, his sincere look almost making Grace pause and reconsider him. Almost. "But the natives need to know that we're here, and we're not going anywhere. They need to see humans and get used to us. Your _puppets_ aren't doing that."

He grabbed an amber paperweight from the desk and tossed it into the air, deftly catching it, then throwing it up again as he contemplated for a moment. "Look, I'll be frank. The situation isn't good. If the natives rebel, we could lose lives, here. _People_ are at stake. _Humans_."

"Which is why you can't just go mowing down their home, Parker!" Grace pushed herself off the doorframe and stood straight again, throwing her hands up in defeat. "We have to respect them, or else they are _never _going to respect us." She walked over to his desk, leaning down to be face-to-face with him. "You can either transport your precious unobtanium by air, or get prepared for _real_ hell to come through Hell's Gate before the week is over. They might be fighting with sticks and stones now, but they have much more lethal methods they could be using. And _will_ be using, if _you_ don't smarten up!" She poked him sharply in the chest with her finger before pulling back and standing straight again.

And then there it was: the moment of truth, the moment when things went to hell, or were neatly smoothed out and swept under the rug. It would be one or the other; Grace's rant could have easily pushed the already angry young administrator over the edge. She was literally counting down the seconds until he would blow up; she expected reprimand, a slap on the wrist, but she was silently hoping that he wouldn't decide to disband her program.

Instead of fighting back like Dunn would have, Parker's shoulders slumped down in defeat. "What should I do?" he asked, almost pathetically looking toward her for guidance.

"_You_ want _me_ to tell _you_ what do you?" Grace asked incredulously, absolutely dumbfounded by his reaction.

"Yes!" Parker yelled, slamming his fist down on the desk. "I've been here for one Goddamn week, and all everyone has asked me to do is make life-changing decisions! And _every _decision I make seems to make _something_ go down the crapper!" He stood up, planting his hands on the desk and leaning forward towards her. "So _yes_, Grace, I am asking you: What do _you_ think I should do?" He straightened, pinching the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "Because you seem to be the only other _sane _person on this whole Goddamn planet."

"You know what I think we should be doing," Grace reminded him, staring down her boy-faced boss. "You've seen my requests. That's what I think you should do."

Parker sighed, sitting down again and rubbing his temples. "I'll let you make preparations for your school," he said quietly. "You do what it takes to get the tree huggers to either stay out of our way. If they don't want roads, find me something that they _do_ want so I can dangle it in front of them."

"Parker, I don't think we _have_ anything they want. What are we supposed to offer them? Concrete, guns and computers? What use would they have for that?" Grace shook her head, crossing her arms protectively across her chest. "All they want, I think, is for us to treat them with _respect_."

"Fine, then do that. Because I only have so many olives, Grace. And if I'm left with just a stick when they're all gone, I'll have to use it to defend myself. And I will."

That, Grace didn't doubt.

* * *

"Merry Christmas, Parker," Grace greeted, once again leaning in his doorway. His office was almost completely empty, with the exception of a couple of cardboard boxes. Parker was cleaning out Dunn's old things, finally, after months of it laying around. "What're you gonna do with that stuff, anyway?"

Parker shrugged. "Send it back to Earth on the next shuttle. His family might want this crap. I don't know." He dropped one of the many paperweights that littered the desk into an open box, smiling at the little _clink_ it made. "As long as I don't have to look at it anymore, I'm good."

Grace laughed, entering the office. "And you're doing this on Christmas Eve?"

"It's just another day on Pandora," he declared, shoving another knickknack into the box with vigour. "Not like there's anyone here to spend it with, anyway." He seemed rather dejected, and Grace couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

"Well, what would you be doing if you were still on Earth?" she asked, and he chuckled.

"Honestly?" he laughed. "_Golfing_."

"Golfing?" Grace repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, Golfing. My dad took me golfing every Christmas Eve when I was little. It was like tradition." Parker shook his head, about to shove another piece of junk into the box when he stopped, holding the shiny rock in his hand and turning it over.

"Is that unobtainium?" she asked, eying the rock with disgust. Just because it paid for her research didn't mean she had to like it. She hated the stuff, because the RDA were so prepared to mow down the Na'vi to get to it.

"Yeah, it is," he said, stuffing the rock into his pants pocket and shaking his head. "Dunn was a nut. Keeping it around where anyone could take it. Idiot." He chuckled, grabbing a handful of feathered pens from a desk drawer and adding them to the box. "How did you put up with him?"

Grace shrugged her shoulders slowly. "I don't know. He was alright, once you got used to his oddness." She shook her head. "Good-night, Parker. I just came by to wish you a Merry Christmas."

Parker made a noise of acknowledgement, his hand occupied by turning that stupid rock over and over in his pocket.

* * *

It was a week after Christmas that the school was completed. Grace's dreams— dreams that had been squashed by Dunn and his squeamishness at the idea of fraternizing with the enemy— were laid out before her in brick and wood. It was beautiful; the Na'vi children were excited to start learning something new from Grace, with whom they had formed a solid friendship.

Grace's life could not have been getting any better. Dr. Max Patel, one of her junior researchers, was helping her revise some of the aspects of her book, and it was going great. The school was going great. Her work in general was going great. Such success was unheard of. She couldn't have been happier.

But she couldn't help but notice that Parker seemed _off_. He never put that hunk of unotanium down; he could constantly be seen playing with it, tossing it around, even just _staring _at it. It was starting to get rather creepy and obsessive.

Since her mood was so good, she figured the least she could do was try and cheer him up. She had a fantastic idea, but it would take some bribery. She enlisted the help of Max, who had no idea of the end result, but was still willing to help her get the materials she needed, no questions asked.

It was two weeks after Christmas that she showed up at Parker's with a long, wrapped box and an anonymous note that simply read "_Merry Christmas, Parker_," and left it on his now-bare desk.

The next day, and almost every day after that, Parker Selfridge strutted around the Base with his new putter and demonstrated his skills with a borrowed ball and a _World's Best Golfer _mug. Everyone noticed his shift in mood, but no one but Grace knew what had brought it about.

With a self-satisfied smile, she went back to her work, feeling a little better because of her good deed of the day. ...Week. ...Year. _Whatever_.

* * *

"To everything working out!" Parker toasted, raising his glass of champagne to clink with hers. Grace grinned, the events of the day _not _weighing on her heart for once. Not only was the school going well, but the Na'vi were really starting to accept her. The children especially loved to hear her stories, and today, she had been approved of by Mo'at. Things were really looking up.

"To everything working out," she agreed, downing her glass in one gulp. "Even if you are an idiot."

Parker chuckled, taking the bottle and refilling her glass. "Sticks and stones may break my bones," he said with a wink, "But words can never hurt me."

"You left out poison-tipped arrows, but I get your point," she laughed, holding up her glass again. "To having peaceful relations with and not being killed anytime soon by the Na'vi?"

"I'll toast to that," Parker said, raising his glass again.

How they had ended up drinking together a few months after the school's opening, alone in Parker's newly-renovated office, neither would remember the next morning. Grace would remember bits and pieces— the fact his love of money rivalled her love of science, the fact that they had toasted to the most unnecessary things over and over until the bottle of champagne (and maybe several others) was empty, and the fact that she got extremely horny when she was drunk.

All these things she remembered later, while she carefully pulled back the blanket that covered her thin body and tiptoed around the room, searching for her discarded clothing. She kept looking over her shoulder at the lump curled beneath the tangled blankets, though the gentle snoring kept her assured that Parker was good and out. Hopefully, he'd wake up in the morning and think that the whole evening was just an alcohol-induced dream, if only she could find her underwear...

The waking snort be made by the sleeping figure made Grace suddenly freeze, one arm extended under the bed and feeling around for the lost article. He rolled over and the mattress creaked loudly, causing Grace to swear under her breath. Her brain was shouting, _Get out while you still can!_ And, as always, she followed her brain's advice. It was usually pretty sound, after all.

And so she found herself sneaking out of the officer's quarters (which, she noted, were much roomier than the ones the scientists were given) with an uncomfortable breeze beneath her skirt. She didn't encounter a single person on her walk of shame back to her own room, which she was thankful for, because it would have been hard to explain.

With a dreadful headache coming on, she popped a couple of Aspirin, and shut herself away from the world. She still had a few good hours to try and sleep it off before the rest of the Base would wake up.

Her headache, however, refused to go away when she had to open her eyes and get ready for her day. She was bleary-eyed and felt thoroughly hung over, but she had work to supervise, so she gritted her teeth and dressed herself.

Every noise was amplified by her sensitive ears as she entered the mess hall, every grunt and laugh the marine idiots were making made her cringe. After grabbing herself a banana for breakfast, because she wasn't sure she could stomach much else, she plopped herself down rather ungracefully across from Max Patel.

"Good morning, Grace," he said brightly. Grace groaned and shook her head, then put a finger to her lips.

"Quiet down, would you?" she whispered, dropping her banana on the table and pressing her fingers to her temples. "No offense."

"Are you hung over?" Max questioned eagerly, because he was very perceptive and loved to know he was right. Grace gave him a _duh_ face, and picked up her food again, staring at it for a long time. Deciding it wasn't worth the stomach ache it would cause her, she pushed the fruit towards Max, who added it to his tray without question.

"Yes," Grace admitted. "I am hung over, and my brain feels like it had been turned to mush."

Max nodded, understanding. "Would you like some of my toast instead?" he asked, frowning when she shook her head. "No? Okay. Well, would you like to discuss chapter seven some more? Because I have a new list of suggestions—"

"No, Max," she sighed. "I don't want to talk about chapter sev—"

"Sorry to interrupt," a cheerful voice cut her off. Grace stopped and looked up; Parker Selfridge was looming over her, a smug grin on his round little boyish face. "But you left these in my room last night. I thought you'd want them back."

And with that, he dropped a pair of black ladies' panties onto the table. Grace snatched them up and stuffed them in her pocket immediately, but not before Max's eyes bugged out of his head in surprise, and a group of marines sitting nearby started hooting and hollering obscenities at her.

"Why _thank _you, Parker," she said facetiously. "Always the gentleman, aren't you?"

He grinned and said a cheeky, "Always," before turning around and stalking out of the mess hall.

Grace wasn't blushing— she wasn't some ridiculed school girl who couldn't handle her embarrassment, after all— but she wasn't comfortable with the situation, either. Getting up and leaving would just have drawn more attention to herself, so Grace chose to stay seated, though her colleague was openly gawking.

"Did you...? You honestly...? Jesus Christ, how drunk _were _you?" he stuttered, and Grace made a face.

"It was a mistake," she defended herself, scoffing slightly, "Like _you_'ve never made a mistake when someone gets you extremely drunk." She shook her head, snatching a piece of toast off his plate and sticking it in her mouth. "We can discuss chapter seven again later."

* * *

Apparently, it was a mistake she made several more times.

Though subsequent to the mess hall incident, soon after which Parker had admitted he was still rather intoxicated and '_thought it would be funny_ _at the time_,' they mutually agreed to keep their affairs under wraps. If someone had been paying more attention, they might have noticed that Grace and Parker were absent during for most mealtimes, opting to dine in his quarters instead. Fortunately for them, no one _was _paying attention.

What they were doing could hardly be considered a relationship, even; a few dinners and a lot of sex didn't make it a relationship. Grace thought that maybe what they had could be deemed '_friends with benefits_,' though there were more benefits in the deal than there was friendship. But whatever their not-relationship was, it was kept secret from the rest of their colleagues. They pretended to have a mutual dislike for one another when in the company with others, and were only friendly when alone.

Blowing off steam with sex and mini golf tournaments with Parker became Grace's only way to relax when things started to go downhill again. The sudden change in direction happened to be caused by none other than Colonel Miles Quaritch, who had been appointed the new Chief of Security. He had big ideas, just like Parker had— but most of his were more sinister. While Parker tried his best to respect the natives and leave them alone, Quaritch seemed to almost _want_ to hurt them in order to obtain unobtanium— and that was frightening.

Ever since Quaritch's first day as Chief, when he had been injured by a stray viperwolf on his first patrol of the Gate, he had had this hatred towards all things _alien_ that he even refused to eat the native fruit grown on-base. He was a dangerous man, but Parker had kept him on.

"He knows what he's doing when it comes to defence of the Base," Parker said, trying to convince Grace that Quaritch's presence was not going to harm her program. "I respect him, and I trust him with my safety. That's what counts, isn't it? That he keeps us all safe?"

"The Na'vi aren't going to attack us unless we aggravate them first. They aren't _hostile_, Park. And Quaritch is _dangerous_."

"Then it's a good thing we have him on our side, hm?" He chuckled and smoothed back a piece of red hair from her forehead, leaning down and pressing a kiss to her temple. "Don't worry, Grace. He knows what he's doing."

"Maybe that's what I'm scared of," she grumbled, but relented.

She still held no respect for the marine, or any of them really, but that could have been her nature shining through. She didn't like the use of force against the Na'vi at the best of times, and at the worst of times, she was downright mental about it.

She might disagree with Quaritch on how the Na'vi communications should be handled, but it wasn't like she officially had a say in what went on— she had less clearance than he, and even though that was bullshit considering how long she'd been working on Pandora, it was the truth. The only pull she still had was through Parker, because he discreetly followed her advice more often than not.

Grace wasn't usually a cuddler, but she knew that Parker was, and that was why she stayed late that evening just to snuggle with him. If she wanted to keep her pull in the RDA, perhaps she'd better get used to snuggling— and while she wasn't sleeping her way to the top, because she just wasn't that kind of girl, it was kind of nice to know that she could feel loved and be getting work done at the same time. It was a lot less complicated than a _real_ relationship would be, right?

* * *

"I thought we were—" _What were they?_ Grace didn't really have an answer, so she picked the word that sounded right. "—_friends_, Parker."

"We _are _friends," he protested.

"Then what the hell is this?"

She shoved a piece of paper under his nose, which he angrily took from her and examined. His eyes scanned the page, moving quickly back and forth as his lips moved silently to the words and his eyebrows came together to meet in the middle.

"I didn't approve this," he said quietly, shaking his head and offering the paper back to her. "I don't know what this is."

"_This_," Grace said, punctuating it back grabbed the paper from him. "...is what happens when you start taking orders from a _marine_." She tore up the sheet, sprinkling little pieces of paper all over his new carpet. "Quaritch is going to be the end of you, if you let him, Park."

"Quaritch has excellent ideas, and he gets things done. He lets us make a profit."

"By shooting at innocents?"

"He hasn't—!"

"He _will_." Grace shook her head, her face revealing how much she felt horribly betrayed. "Don't you get it, Parker? The Na'vi are people, and this is their_ home_. How would you feel if some aliens came and decided to tear up _your_ home for a stupid rock?"

"_It isn't stupid!_" Parker roared, slamming his fist down on the desk. Grace stared at him as he stared back, his chest heaving. There was no sound besides his panting for almost a whole minute as they just stared, neither wanting to back down.

"It's that belief that is going to get you killed one day. And for what? So that you could have a shiny little rock in your pocket?"

"It isn't stupid," he whispered, and Grace just shook her head, her mouth curling back in a vicious snarl.

"You go ahead and think that, _Selfridge_," she growled just as quietly, leaning in close to him to make sure he heard every word. "But you are the most delusional, selfish, greedy—" She paused, looking him in the eyes, "—and _despicable_ human being I have ever met, and I would _never_ be your friend."

* * *

"I can't _believe_ you!"

"I know it _sounds_ awful, but think about all the unobt—"

"I don't care about the fucking unobtanium!" Grace shrieked, slamming both palms down on his desk. "What the hell gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?"

"They attacked us first!"

"No, you pointed machines guns at them, and they reacted. What did you expect would happen? They would just move out of your way?"

"If they were smart, that's _exactly _what they would have done!"

"Don't you understand, you dimwitted Neanderthal? You have probably just single-handedly ruined _any _chance at peaceful negotiations with the Na'vi! They don't trust me anymore, and they sure as hell won't let me continue teaching. How could you _do_ this?" She was shaking, she was so angry, holding herself up by leaning on his desk.

"Grace—"

"Don't you '_Grace_,' me," Grace snarled, shaking her head. "Quaritch is using you as his puppet. He's ruining _everything_ we worked for. _Everything._" Her mouth turned down in a frown, and she was holding back tears from watering eyes. "You're letting him _win_."

"This isn't a _game_," Parker told her, his matter-of-fact tone breaking her heart a little. "It isn't a _competition_. You were supposed to get me something that the blue monkeys wanted. You failed. Game over."

"I thought it wasn't a game," she remarked, biting the inside of her cheek.

"It isn't," he agreed.

"Well, then." Grace straightened her lab coat, and stood erect, looking him in the eye. "I guess it isn't over then, huh?" She turned to leave, but his voice stopped her, just like it always did.

"These new drivers aren't going to change anything," he said, "Just because you're getting two new puppets for you to play with doesn't mean the world is going to stop spinning and start going to the way you want it to."

She didn't look back as she stormed out of his office. He was wrong. She was sure of it.


	2. During

_Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own ideas, and that is doubly true about lines quoted directly from the script, which is what I used to get direct quotes, so it might vary from the movie a little.  
Summary: Their relationship, or whatever it was, was doomed from the start. It might've started on a high note, but it was all downhill from there.  
Parker/Grace, because we all know that there is more there than just hate, or there was. It had to have stemmed from some pace of betrayal and pain... this is my take on how it happened._

* * *

_**Downward Spiral**_

Grace was angry. Scratch that, she was _pissed off_. She'd asked for a skilled, seasoned researcher and she'd gotten a jarhead marine. How on Pandora was that fair? Tom Sully and Norm Spellman were supposed to be the dream team she'd been praying for— they were supposed to be the saviours of his whole disaster. And instead of Tom Sully, PHD, she had gotten his rude, uneducated and freaking _disabled_ twin brother. So yeah, she had a reason to be pissed.

And so she stormed to the tech room, where she knew Parker would be showing off his golf skills (where else would he be?) just in time to hear him laugh and say, "Did you _see_ that?" with the pride in his voice that only came from a good putt.

"Yes sir!" a worker replied, and Grace rolled her eyes.

"No you didn't, you were looking at the monitor. I love this putter, Ronnie! I love this putter!" was Parker's reply, and it only infuriated the already pissed off scientist. She had given him that damn putter and what had she got in return? A headache, a lowered budget and a jarhead marine.

"Parker," she said, trying to hold her temper in check. She didn't want to go around frightening the lab techs, did she? He ignored her and lined up another shot on his makeshift green. "You know, I used to think it was benign neglect, but now I see that you are intentionally screwing me."

Parker gave a little smirk. He could have made a raunchy joke concerning the fact that he had intentionally screwed her before, and she quite enjoyed it, but he refrained, instead muttering, "Grace, you know, I enjoy our little talks," before tapping the ball with his putter and sending it rolling towards the mug he had set up.

Grace kicked the mug out of the way so that he ball missed it entirely, giving him a satisfied smile and saying, "Oops." She crossed her arms behind her back, and he looked up at her, making an annoyed face. Gone was his boyish smile and charm; in its place was a hardened look of a corporate idiot.

"I need a researcher," she complained, shaking her head, "Not some jarhead dropout."

"Well, actually, I thought we got lucky with him," Parker said cheerfully, walking past her to retrieve his golf ball.

Her mouth fell open and she snarled, "_Lucky?_" in the most indignant voice she possessed.

"Yeah!"

"How is this in _any way_ lucky?" she asked, because she could not believe how stupid he was being. This wasn't a good thing. It was a horrible, awful mistake that someone should have picked up on long before her. It was a threat to her program, a disaster-in-the-making, and he thought she was _lucky_?

"Well, lucky your guy had a twin brother, and lucky that brother wasn't some oral hygienist or something," he explained in a deadpan, picking up his ball and turning around the walk around her. "A marine we can use. I'm assigning him to your team as security escort." Parker walked to the holographic display of Pandora, handed his putter to his assistant before dropping his golf ball into the display, smiling slightly when it rolled through several to-scale trees like a wrecking ball.

"The last thing I need is a trigger-happy jarhead out there—"

"Look you're supposed to be winning the hearts and minds of the natives," he cut her off, playing with the graphics and turning the forest around with mild amusement. "Isn't that the whole point of your little puppet show? If you walk like them, you talk like them they'll trust you. We build them a school, teach them English. But after what? How many _years_—" He turned to face her, "—the relations with the indigenous are only getting worse."

"Yeah, well that tends to happen when you use machine guns on them," Grace groaned, making it clear how angry she was.

"_Right_," he half-chuckled, motioning to her with his hand and turning, "Come here."

He sauntered to his office, muttering to himself, and grabbed that stupid little rock off the display that usually held it floating on his desk. He held it up and explained to her, as if he hadn't already, its supposed value. "You see this? This is why we're here. Unontanium." He pointed to the rock, looking at it lovingly. "Because this little gray rock sells for twenty million a kilo. This is what pays for the whole party, and it's what pays for _your_ science. _Comprendo?_"

She tried to get a word in, but he cut off her attempt as he placed the rock back onto its perch. "Those savages are threatening our whole operation. We're on the brink of war and you're supposed to be finding me a diplomatic solution." He punctuated his words with a tap on his desk, leaning forward and giving her that look he used to give her when she refused to cuddle. That _I'm mad at you_ look.

She frowned at him, giving him the look right back. "So use what you've got, and get me some results," he said, sitting back down at his desk and waving his hand as if he wanted her to leave. Grace turned as if to do so, then grabbed his doorknob and violently slammed it shut with her still inside the room.

"Don't give me that shit, Parker," she growled, approaching his desk like an animal stalking its prey. "You've been eating up the crap that Quaritch is feed you, haven't you?" She snorted, glaring down at her past lover without a shred of compassion in her eyes. "He's going to ruin you."

"You go ahead and think that, _babydoll,_" he said, intentionally using the nickname he had given her when they had been together, just because he knew it would infuriate her further. "But he's going to be the _saviour _of this place. He has great ideas; he's going to make us all _rich_."

Grace shook her head, watching as his eyes followed the movement of her hair. He had always loved her hair, after all. "Your name should have been _Selfish_, not Selfridge," she murmured, "They got a couple letters wrong." She turned around and opened his door, prepared to leave when she was once again stopped by his annoying, nasally voice.

"You never said I was selfish in bed, now did ya?" he said with a chuckle, a shit-eating grin on his face that was anything but endearing. Grace turned and left with a disgusted feeling in the pit of her stomach as she slammed the door behind her.

Parker's face fell as soon as she was gone. He knew she was right, deep down, but he squashed those feelings. _Think of the profit_, he encouraged himself. _So a few blue monkeys have to die to get it. Who cares? I don't_.

"I don't," he said out loud, ignoring the gnawing feeling the words left in his belly. "I don't care."

* * *

It was the day after Jake's first link-up, and Grace was actually feeling pretty good. While he wasn't the driver she had asked for, at least he could get in and out of his Avatar without his brain collapsing. (And that _had_ happened before, to a few of the inexperienced drivers.)

Breakfast started normal; she chatted amiably with her fellow scientists while the marines burped and laughed and were generally disgusting at the next table. Norm seemed to fit right in, going to town talking about biometric sensors— Jake was sort of distracted, but still tried to listen, even if he didn't completely understand what they were talking about. He was slightly isolated from the group, and he seemed to notice the things around him more.

Grace didn't see Trudy approach until she was already standing by the table. Jake had seen her coming, and she directed her words to him— how odd. Grace and Trudy had known each other for years— she'd been her and Max's personal pilot for a while when they were setting up Site 26 in the Halleluiah Mountains— and yet she went to Sully. This demanded some attention.

"Sully— Colonel wants to see you in the Armor Bay," she declared, putting a hand on her hip and throwing him a lazy smile. Grace felt her stomach drop. He _wouldn't_, would he?

Jake gave Norm a puzzled glance and pivoted his chair, wheeling away from the table. He followed Trudy, who was stomping her way to the mess hall doors in those ridiculously heavy boots of hers.

Grace scowled as she watched him go, grabbing a piece of toast from Max's plate and biting into it angrily. She had a bad Quaritch was going to contaminate her new driver with his lies and hate— Sully was already a trigger-happy jarhead, she didn't need him being a hateful, angry-at-Pandora trigger-happy jarhead.

"Are you okay, Grace?" Max asked, looking at her with concern.

"I'm fine," she grumbled, getting up from her seat and shoving the rest of the toast into her mouth. Max watched her go with a sad look in his eyes. He knew that frown. Grace was upset over something.

She doesn't have a chance to talk to Jake in private— turn him to her side, so to speak— before their sample-gathering turned search-and-rescue. She gave up on him when they had to leave, having very little hope that he could survive the night on his own. With no training, no knowledge, no language skills to ask for help? It was laughable. The Avatar was probably already dead.

But no, he survived. _Went into the outhouse and came out smellin' like roses_, as her mother used to say. He got in with the fucking _Clan Leader's daughter_, for Christ's Sake! She shook her head and retold the story the next morning at breakfast, for the simple reason that she could tell a mean story. And though she was vaguely proud of her little marine, she wouldn't tell _him_ that.

"—so the kid is out there one night and he's got the Queen Bitch herself offering him the spare room and the car keys. Unbelievable!" she said, her fellow scientists fascinated and hanging on her every word. Well, except for Norm, who seems to be rather angry about the whole situation in general.

"It's not something you can teach," Jake agreed, grinning like a fool. Some of the other scientists clapped Jake on the shoulder and congratulated him, and he ate it all up. Cheeky bastard.

"That's awesome, Jake!" Max said, smiling fondly at the new addition to their team while Norm chomped noisily on his bacon, refusing to look in Jake's direction.

"For reasons I cannot fathom, the Omaticaya have chosen _you_," Grace said, shaking her head. "God help us all."

* * *

Jake had already given his first report to Selfridge and Quaritch, feeling rather proud of himself for doing so. Being loyal to his marine background felt good, like a long drink after having been parched—he was smiling like an idiot. Yeah, he could get used to this.

Quaritch turned from gazing out at the wall of forest beyond the Base to Jake, displaying an almost feral-looking grin. "The _jarhead_ clan?" he laughed. "And that worked?"

Jake grinned back at him. "Yeah. They want to study me. See if I can learn to be one of them."

"_That's_how you seize the initiative," Quaritch praised him, looking down at Jake like the ex-marine was his only son. "I wish I had ten more like you."

"Look Sully—" Parker cut in, the mushy goodness making his stomach and his head ache. "Find out what these blue monkeys want. We tried to give them medicine and education. Roads! But no – they like mud. I wouldn't care, except—"

He turned to the 3D display and pointed to Hometree. "Their damn village is sitting right over the richest unobtanium deposit for a hundred clicks in any direction. Which sucks— for them— because they need to relocate."

Jake frowned, looking thoughtful over this new information. "Does Augustine know about this?"

Parker laughed. "Yeah, she does, and she's on the next ship back if she tries to cock-block me on it." Again, he added in his head, though that was not a point Sully needed to know.

"So— who talks them into moving?" Jake asked, looking between the two head-honchos sceptically.

"Guess," Quaritch said with a half-smile on his lopsided face.

"What if they won't go?"

Quaritch's, "I'm betting they will," was icy with malicious intent that make Parker recoil a little— not that Sully noticed in the slightest. He regained his balanced after a moment, floundering for something to contribute.

"Killing the indigenous looks bad," he said, shaking his head. "But there's one thing shareholders hate more than bad press— and that's a bad quarterly statement. Find me a carrot to get them to move, or it's going to have to be _all stick_."

Jake looked shaken by the enormity of this new responsibility, and he didn't even laugh at the little joke Parker just made. _Grace would of gotten it,_ he thought with a scowl. _She would have laughed at the stick thing. Olive branch, stick, haha._

"You got three months," Quaritch concluded. "That's when the dozers get there."

"I'm on it."

Parker watched as Sully wheeled himself away, a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe he should be taking some medication for this constant stomach ache. It never seems to want to go away.

Jake's second report is much more informative; he had gotten into Hometree and knew the layout of the whole shebang. "You've got outer columns, then a secondary ring here, and an inner ring. Then a core structure, it's like a spiral, that's how they move up and down," he explained, pointing their locations out on the display.

"I'm going to need accurate scans on all these columns," Quaritch said, eying the display with distaste.

"Roger that."

Parker reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, that feeling of _being watched_ making him itchy. He turned around just in time to see a white lab coat swish around the corner. _Damn it_, he thought, knowing full well that if any of Grace's scientists had been witness to their meeting that he'd be getting an earful from her in the morning.

He wasn't wrong.

"Sign this."

Parker looked up from where he was diligently typing out his newest budget report for corporate— whoever had started that rumour that he got the janitors to do it for him were totally wrong— to see Grace looming over him, a paper held out in his direction. He delicately took the sheet from her and scanned its contents.

"You want to move your two new drivers to Site 26? Isn't that way up in Halleluiah?"

"Yes." Grace put on her sweetest smile. "Being closer to the object of our current research will be quite influential on the project, and my team needs no distractions. So, sign it. I need administrative approval before I can request a pilot."

"But— wait, why? Does this have something to do with Quaritch again?"

"Oh, _no_, of _course _not," Grace said with another smile. "It's just a necessary development. It will be beneficial to Jake Sully in his studies with Neytiri, as well as his integration with the culture. Trust me on this one, Park."

"But—"

"No _buts_, Parker, just sign the damn thing before I _make_ you." Gone was her gentle, sweet attitude and back was her usual ferociousness. "This has nothing to do with _you_ for once."

Sheepishly, Parker signed and initialled on the dotted lines, then turned the paper back over to her. "If it helps the program, I'm all for it. Sully has been doing an excellent job, I hear." Grace snorted.

"Oh, I _know_ you've heard," she said, folding up for request form and sliding it into her back pocket securely. "Don't go getting your hopes up about Sully. I know where his alliances are, and they aren't with you. At least, not for much longer."

Parker paled. "Who...?"

"One of my worker-bees overheard your little conference meeting. I don't appreciate you trying to get intel out of my personnel without my knowledge, and don't think it's going to be happening again. If you think you need to know something, you come directly to _me_, you got it?"

Parker gave a dejected little sigh, his round face looking almost as sincere as it once had. But not quite. Corruption and greed and ruin the face of innocence; Parker would never gain back the boyish charm he once had, the endearing smile, the adorable naivety had once possessed.

"Yeah, I got it."

"Good."

Grace turned on her heel and left, her lab coat swishing behind her as she rounded the corner. His eyes followed her until she was gone, the horrible feeling in his stomach returning. _Indigestion_, he thought, _just a little indigestion_.

As Grace stormed into the lab, ambient lab techs cringed away from her impending wrath. But she walked up to Norm and Jake, her gaze steely as she instructed them to gather the belongings they would need for a little fieldtrip.

"I'm not about to let Quaritch and Selfridge micro-manage this thing," Grace announced to her team as they began packing up the science equipment they would need for the expedition. She looked pointedly at Jake, who was wearing a guilty-looking frown. "We're going up to the mountains. There's a mobile link up at Site 26 that we can work out of."

"The _Halleluiah _Mountains?" Norm asked excitedly, looking ready to burst.

"That's right," Grace confirmed, and Norm punched the air with joy.

"_Yesss!_" Jake shot him a look, to which Norm sighed and adapted a pompous tone to his voice. "The legendary Floating Mountains of Pandora? Heard of _them_?"

* * *

It'd been three months.

Parker was wearing an exopack, his breath misting the inside and making it impossible to see the white golf ball as he attempted to get it to stay on a tee. The forest was dark beyond the fence; still within the compound, the lights of the Ops patrol illuminated his make-shift golf course. Putting outside was always more fulfilling; more like the real deal back on Earth.

His eyes caught sight of movement, and he whipped his head up in time to see Grace and Jake approaching from the direction of the Ops Center. He shook his head, making a growling noise at the back of his throat. When she had been gone, so had the stomach pains. And now she was back again. Damn it.

"Good of you to stop by. How's it going out there? Our blue friends all packed up yet?"

He had known their return would be imminent, since Quaritch had plans for this week and was recalling all teams. Parker shook his head again, holding his breath to try and clear his mask of the mist. He swung his putter, and he knew he had excellent form, but the clouding on his mask made it impossible to get a good shot in.

"See, I keep hooking it. It's the damn pack." The ball dropped into the mud just past marker 220, and Parker sighed dejectedly. He whistled, and a trooper near his position ran to retrieve it. "The low gravity and the high air density cancel each other out so—"

"You called us back to report – you want to hear it or not?" Jake remarked, crossing his arms.

"Go ahead."

"Jake is making incredible progress, years worth in just a few months. But – we need more time," Grace explained quickly, her movements fidgety. Parker sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Not what I was hoping to hear."

A gust of wind enveloped the group; outdoor meetings could be such a pain. The sky opened up and began to drop tiny droplets of water onto them, but Parker had been anticipating this, and calmly pulled an umbrella from his golf bag and snapped it open, protecting himself from the immanent downpour.

"Parker, it's their ancestral home. They've lived there since before human history _began_. You can spare them a few more weeks," Grace protested, her eyes wild with that passion she held for the forest. Parker's stomach twisted, and he frowned in disgust over his own weakness for the redhead.

_Detachment,_ he thought miserably, _all business, remember. Think of the profit._

"This thing is inevitable. What does it matter when it happens? I'm sorry, Dr. Augustine. You're out of time." He turned, ignoring the pain in his abdomen. He was right, and she was wrong. He didn't care about that heartbroken look on her face. He didn't.

And so he left them in the rain to get drenched.

* * *

It seemed as though her whole fucking life had been turned into a metaphor. The heavens opening up to rain on her when she was sad, was just another brick in the metaphorical wall. Another drop in the bucket. Another tree in the forest.

Jake had tried so hard. He'd gone through the last step to become Omaticaya, and had mated with Neytiri (the idiot). He'd knocked down a couple cameras on a bulldozer and all of a sudden they're getting pulled out of Site 26, violently, and brought back to the Base.

The image of Jake in is Avatar, a vicious snarl curling his lip as he thrashed a rock to the camera was on the screen in front of them. Jake sat, bruised and bleeding, watching himself on the monitor. Grace and Norm stand nearby, rubbing their wrists where the zip-ties bit in. Parker and Quaritch watched them with disdain.

"You let me down, son. You got a little local tail and completely forgot what team you play for," Quaritch growled, his voice low and menacing.

Jake met his gaze with a defiant glare. Grace looked between the two, a horrible feeling enveloping her. It couldn't be the end. They couldn't go through with it. All those lives...

She turned to Parker, her only hope. "Parker, listen, there may still be time to—"

"Shut your fucking hole!" Quaritch screeched, cutting off her last-ditch attempt to convince someone that this was wrong. Grace was momentarily stunned by Quaritch's fury. But she met it with her own intensity, not backing down an inch.

"Or what, _Ranger Rick_? You gonna shoot me?" She looked to Parker, her gaze a little sad, but more furious. "You need to muzzle your dog."

"Can we just take this down a couple notches, please?" Parker begged, the passive side of his personality coming through. _Aw, look at little Parker, never wanting to get into a fight. Never wanting to get his hands dirty. Poor little Parker_.

"You say you want to keep your people alive? Start by listening to her," Jake told Quaritch, nodding to Grace to continue.

"This is bad, Parker. Those trees were sacred to the Omaticaya in a way you can't imagine."

"You know what? You throw a stick in the air around here it falls on some sacred fern, for Christ's sake!" he rebutted, his tone sarcastic and mean.

"I'm not talking about pagan voodoo here - I'm talking about something _real_ and measurable in the biology of the forest!"

"Which is _what_, exactly?" Parker prompted her, his nose in the air. Grace sighed.

"What we think we know... is that there's some kind of electrochemical communication between the roots of the trees. Like the synapses between neurons. Each tree has ten to the fourth connections to the trees around it, and there are ten to the twelfth trees on Pandora—"

"That's a lot, I'm guessing?" parker cut in, crossing his arms and staring at her like the moron he was.

"That's more connections than the _human brain_. You get it? It's a network - a global network. And the Na'vi can access it. They can upload and download data— memories— at sites like the one _you just destroyed_."

There was a moment of stunned silence while everyone processed this tidbit of information. Parker looked particularly thoughtful, but only for a second. His eyes lit up with a look of mirth, his grown turning into a lopsided half-smile.

"What the hell have you people been smoking out there?" he laughed, breaking the silence and the tension. "They're just Goddamn _trees_!"

"You need to wake up, Parker," Grace said, shaking her head. "The wealth of this world isn't in the ground— it's all around us. The Na'vi know that, and they're fighting to defend it. If you want to share this world with them, _you_ need to understand _them_."

"I think we understand them just fine, thanks to Jake here," Quaritch said, flashing the pair a grin as Grace and Jake gave each other looks of horror. He pressed a button on the monitor beside, him and Jake's video log began to play.

Jake's late-night monolog left Grace stunned. The last words of the log are, "_They're never going to leave Hometree._" Quaritch froze the image, a grin spreading across his face at their stunned expressions.

"Since a deal can't be made— it gets real simple," he said icily to Jake, "So thanks. I'm getting all emotional. I might just give you a big wet kiss."

"Parker, we have to talk, like rational people," Grace pleaded, looking at him with her most heartbroken expression. _Come on,_ Park, she thought, looking into his eyes and seeking the compassion she knew was in there somewhere, _This isn't you. It's never been you._

"Well, I'd cherish that, but unfortunately you're out of here on the next shuttle. All of you. I'm shutting down the Avatar Program, effective _now_."

Grace's heart stopped and her jaw dropped. Because Parker would never have said such a thing. Parker would never have been so cruel. _Parker _would have run over, given her a hug and bitched Quaritch out for not listening to her. This man wasn't Parker. It was Selfridge, and they were completely different people.

* * *

Wainfleet panned a camera across the smouldering hulks of burned bulldozers, the toppled remains of a charred ampsuit, dead troopers bristling with arrows. Destruction flashed across the screen; it was enough to make even a seasoned marine wince with sympathy.

"They hit with banshees first," Wainfleet explained, "Set the ampsuit on fire. Driver's toast."

Quaritch and Selfridge looked on grimly.

"The rest of the squad?" Quaritch asked, his mouth a tin, taut line.

"Six bodies— that's all of 'em. And the equipment is totalled."

Selfridge let out a squeak of surprise. "Christ!" He stared at his Chief of Security soberly as Quaritch outlined the plan.

"I can do it with minimal casualties to the indigenous. We'll clear them out with gas first. It'll be humane. ...More or less."

Selfridge sighed and rubbed his face. It was a big decision. A life-changing decision. Parker would have asked for Grace's advice, but he already knew what it would be in this situation. And Selfridge wasn't prepared to give up that easily. Not with that must profit on the line.

"Hey, don't go limp on me now. This is exactly the incident we needed," Quaritch said, looking at the shorter man with a crooked look of determination.

Parker sighed, considering all the causalities that might be avoided if they had a diplomatic solution. It was Selfridge who said, "Alright, let's pull the trigger."

It hadn't even been three hours since he made the call, and already Quaritch had his pilots preparing for takeoff. Selfridge surveyed the airfield, where crews swarmed over the gunships, loading ordnance. He turned as Jake and Grace charged toward him.

"Parker, wait! _Stop_!" Grace yelled, her voice frantic. "These are people you're about to—"

"_They're fly-bitten savages who live in a tree!_ Look around— I don't know about you but I see a lot of trees. They can _move_."

"For God's Sake, there are children in there! Babies!"

"Look Selfridge, you don't want this kind of blood on your hands. Let me try to talk them out. They trust me," Jake pleaded. Selfridge should have shrugged him off. He should have shaken his head and told them it was too late, the order had been made. He didn't.

Parker and an escort of armed troopers accompanied Jake and Grace to the links. The two enter their units as Norm and Max quickly prepped the system.

"You've got one hour. Unless you want your girlfriend in there when the axe comes down, you get them to evacuate. One hour," he told Jake, his eyes burning. _Children. Babies._ Grace was right. He didn't want that on his head.

Jake nodded and lowered the upper clamshell, shutting himself into the unit. Norm started the sequence, and he was gone.

It was an hour later that Selfridge stared at the destruction on the screen. They hadn't been able to convince the tribe to leave their home, obviously, because when the gas came out, so did the panicked blue monkeys.

Norm and Max were staring in shock, both looking like they either wanted to cry or throw up. Parker shook his head. It wasn't his fault, he reminded himself. If they were smart, they would have moved.

"Pull the plug," he said. Troopers ran to the units and opened them, pulling Jake and Grace from the machines.

There was screaming, there was panic, there was horror and destruction, but Grace saw none of it. Her eyes locked on one face, and her mouth turned downward in a broken snarl. "Murderer!" she yelled, trying to fight against the trooper holding her, binding her wrists together. "Murderer!"

Gone was all hope she had had that Parker would come to his senses. Gone was the believe that under the new, hardened shell, Parker Selfridge was still the young, naive, maybe a little power-hungry guy that had arrived on Pandora. Gone was any compassion or love she had still harboured for him under the hate. The only thing left was blind anger, utter hatred, and an empty hole in her heart.

* * *

Parker sat dejectedly in his office, his head cradled in his hands. He could still see her, his fiery redhead, yelling at him about something or other just over the threshold. No more. There was no way there would ever be any playful banter, fake fights and then make-up sex. She was gone, out of his reach, forever changed.

But they had been doomed from the start.

A commotion outside of his office drew his attention, and he stood up to investigate. _Keep busy_, he thought, _So I don't have to think about her._

When he exited his office, he saw a crowd of lab techs surrounding a monitor, whispering hurriedly. Parker pushed a few of the ambient techs out of the way and looked for himself what was so frigging interesting; and his stomach dropped.

A Samson, number 16, was attempting unauthorised take-off. But that wasn't the scary part. A very familiar head of red hair was helping a disabled ex-marine into the back as bullet after bullet ricocheted off the metal and glass.

"_Grace_," Parker breathed, his eyes locking on the figure shooting at them. The picture wasn't very clear, but he could vaguely make out three jagged scars down the side of the shooter's unprotected face. "Quaritch?"

The Samson made it, and the last shot the camera picked up of the leaving vehicle showed all passengers holding on for dear life, but looking rather uninjured. Parker's heart was beating rapidly, and his breathing was irregular.

"I'll kill him!"

The disgruntled administrator charged through the Base towards the airfield. That _asshole _had shot at _Grace_. Who the _hell _did he think he was?

But Quaritch wasn't at the airfield. He had already disappeared, and left Parker running on a wild goose chase around the entire Base, looking for the SOB. He was definitely getting demoted. Maybe even fired. Because Selfridge had that power, and Parker wasn't afraid to use it.

He didn't find him for several hours, during which Quaritch was setting up the start of a war. When Parker was tipped off the to Chief of Security's plans, he raced to the Armor Bay, staring around him in growing dismay as he walked through the full-scale mobilization. He approached Quaritch, who was barking orders amid a hive of activity around the ampsuits.

"Quaritch! This thing is completely out of control!" Parker yelled, throwing his hands up in the air.

Quaritch ignored him, turning away to focus on ordnance loading.

"Listen to me! I am not authorizing you to turn the mine-workers local into a freakin' militia!"

"I declared threat condition red. That puts all on-world assets under my command," Quaritch remarked, his tone of voice making it sound as if he was talking about the weather, or something equally as trivial. He had a slight smile on his face, as though the weather he was reporting was good weather. It only stood to infuriate Parker further.

"You think you can pull this palace coup shit on me?" Parker yelled, his hands curling into tight fists at his sides. "I can have your ass with _one call_—"

Quaritch grabbed him and pinned him against the side of an ampsuit. "You're a long way from Earth," Quaritch snarled. Parker was paralyzed with fear and shock. Physical force – against _him_? Quaritch released him and walked away a short distance, leaving Parker standing panting against the ampsuit.

"Get him out of here," Quaritch said quietly to a group of his men. Several troopers converged on the young administrators.

"You touch me you're _so _fired," he growled at the troopers, his eyes burning. Grace had been right. Quaritch had been using him, and he had thrown him away when he was done. Grace had been right. _Why hadn't he listened?_

He pushed through the group of men and they escorted him toward the door. Life had gone to hell, and it was all his fault.


	3. After

_Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own ideas.  
Summary: Their relationship, or whatever it was, was doomed from the start. It might've started on a high note, but it was all downhill from there.  
Parker/Grace, because we all know that there is more there than just hate, or there was. It had to have stemmed from some place of betrayal and pain... this is my take on how it happened._

* * *

_**Downward Spiral**_

Parker could do nothing. He knew Quaritch was out of control. Grace had warned him about the dangerousness of the Chief of Security, but he hadn't paid heed to her warnings. Had had been stupid, and selfish, and greedy.

No wonder she hated him.

He locked himself in his office with a data-pad and had any footage from the actual battle transferred to it live. It was hard, watching the destruction of the beautiful planet— destruction that he could have prevented. He could have stopped Quaritch long ago, and had chosen not to. He forced himself to watch to feel the pain of every brave soul out there fighting an unnecessary war, because it was _all his fault_.

He kept his eyes out for familiar faces. He saw Jake, briefly, on a _huge _fucking banshee that seemed to be leading the rest of the attack. He'd had to rewind the feed to see it was really him— and it was. He listened to the reports and watched, horrified, as Samson 16 fell in a fiery blaze of glory, crashing into the forest below and exploding.

Parker gasped, closing his eyes. Samson 16 had been the one to leave with Grace and her team. Had she been on-board when it crashed? Was she dead?

Parker had never been a religious man. He had never been forced to go to church as a child, hadn't been taught any particular religion from his family. His father had been a major supplier in the RDA's weapons detail; a business man. He was all about profit, making money, the end result.

But as he tried to calm himself, hold back the tears threatening to fall because _Grace could be dead_, and _she thought he was horrible_, and _he never got to explain_, and _he was so sorry_, Parker Selfridge prayed for the first time in his thirty-five years of life. He prayed for Grace's survival, because he thought that maybe, there was a chance she wasn't on Samson 16. Maybe she was still at the Halleluiah base at Site 26. Maybe she was still alive and well and waiting for him to come back to her, begging and grovelling for forgiveness.

Hours of fighting. It took hours, and lots of death and destruction for the Na'vi to win, to pull ahead. He knew that Quaritch was dead as his frequent reports and complaints and demands had stopped. They wouldn't have, had Quaritch been alive. He was dead. Parker could feel it.

When the thunder of approaching ships rattled the Base, Parker was almost glad. It was over. It was finished. It was done.

He smiled and adjusted his hair and his jacket, standing up and putting away the data-pad he had been watching. He didn't know what would happen now— with Quaritch gone, the possibilities would be endless— but he knew Grace would want to rebuild the school. After all this, she deserved one hell of a budget raise, and a pay raise too, if he could get corporate to agree.

He grabbed a tie from the desk drawer he kept for emergencies and put it on, tying it expertly and smoothing his hair back again. He just needed to talk to Grace. He could fix all this. Everything would be fine. He had been brainwashed by Quaritch— he hadn't known any better. Grace would forgive him, and he'd convince her to snuggle again, and they'd be in love like they had been once. He could fix all this. Everything would be fine.

But things never go as planned.

The entire Base's worth of personnel were rounded up and were being prepared to evacuate. Parker had been herded around with the others like some kind of animal, and he felt thoroughly pissed off— no one would let him talk to Grace. He was locked in the old Armor Bay (which had been emptied of all its weapons before was used to hold prisoners, of course, and the oxygen had been replaced with Pandora's natural air) with all the other people who would be made to leave Pandora while the scientists who would be staying on the planet prepped the ships for cryo.

_Come on, Grace_, he thought, sitting with his back against a concrete wall as the cold of it seeped into his skin. _You know me. I'm not bad. Come get me, Grace. They're going to send me away, and then I'll never get to tell you how sorry I am, how much I miss you, how much my stomach hurt every time I went against you._

A Na'vi guard pointed a gun at him and grunted. Parker took the hint and stood up, joining the long line of troopers and such who were getting their hands tied together with the plastic zip-ties that were used to hold prisoners waiting for transport back to Earth.

_We're the prisoners now,_ thought Parker, looking up at the huge Na'vi guard with a scared expression.

"Do you speak English?" he asked the Na'vi as loudly as he could, fogging up his exopack's mask with his breath as he spoke. The Na'vi grunted, pointing the gun at him again. "Please, I need to speak to someone in charge, someone who speaks English. Doctor Grace Augustine? Grace? Do you know her?"

The Na'vi began to speak to another of his kind in quick, fluid sounds that made no sense to Parker whatsoever. They could have been barking, for all he cared, until he heard the foreign-sounding "..._Doktor_ _Grace_..." fall from one of their mouths. He sighed with relief. They knew her.

"_Come with,_" one of the Na'vi slurred in broken English, grabbing Parker by the sleeve of his jacket and hauling his towards the airlock that lead to the rest of the sealed-off base. The Na'vi donned his own mask in the 'lock, a new invention of Max's (it filtered the air backwards, so it would be breathable to a Na'vi), and pushed a button on the wall as he had been shown by one of the scientists. Parker pulled off his mask when the light above the door turned green, indicating it was safe to do so. He felt much better being able to breathe without the stupid contraption on his face, but he struggled to keep up with the long strides of the Na'vi. His legs were much shorter than the ten-foot-tall alien, so he followed the guard tripping and half-running as the Na'vi pulled him along darkened corridors. They reached a room at the end of a long hallway that once held the officer's quarters. Not that Parker noticed their location in the almost pitch-blackness, of course.

"_Jakesully, the small, noisy one talks of Doctor Grace,_" Fibrimn explained in hushed Na'vi. Parker waited patiently, his ears not understanding the alien words. "_Is he with the scientists?_"

The room was dark, and Jake flicked on a light and rose from the bunk he had been resting in to look at the human held before Fibrimn. He hauled his unmoving legs over the side of the bunk so they hung limp, shifting into a sitting position.

"What do you want, Selfridge?" he growled, his voice strong even after having just woken from his first rest in almost two days. Parker examined his once-ally carefully. Jake had dark circles under his eyes, and his hair was mussed from sleep. He was thin, pale, and looked wise beyond his years in a way Parker couldn't explain.

"Grace. I want to see Grace. I need to talk to her," he spit out quickly, looking up at the tall Na'vi beside him.

Jake rubbed his eyes, giving Parker a look that said he thought he was lying.

"I want to apologise," he continued, feeling uneasy and filling the silence with his own voice. "Quaritch was using me— he tricked me. I just— she _needs _to know that I tried to stop him once I knew what he was doing. I tried to stop him."

"You—?" Jake stopped, shaking his head. "I don't know what you've been told, Selfridge, but that won't be possible. Grace was killed before the final battle even began."

Parker's shoulders slumped, and he exhaled in one long _whoosh._

Dead. Grace was _dead_. So all his praying had been for naught— she had already been dead long before he started. Killed. Murdered. _Gone_.

"No," Parker whispered, shaking his head. "No, I— I don't believe you." His lip trembled, and he sucked it between his teeth to stop it from shaking. "I don't— how...?"

"Quaritch shot her during our escape from the Base," Jake said slowly, transferring himself to his wheelchair slowly so as not to spook the stunned-looking administrator. "We did everything we could to save her, but without access to human medical care— the Na'vi did what they could, but she was just too badly injured."

Parker's stomach twisted, and his knees began to shake. His brain seemed to freeze, uncomprehending the information Jake was feeding him. He'd seen her in the Samson. She'd looked fine. She couldn't be dead. She couldn't be.

"That's not funny," he whispered, flaring his nostrils and glaring down at the disabled ex-marine, who in turn was giving him a surprised— but sympathetic— look. "That's not— _where is she?_"

"Selfridge— _Parker_," Jake stressed, rolling himself towards him, "I'm not lying to y—"

"_Where is she?_" he bellowed, turning and ducking under Fibrimn's arm and bolting down the dark hallway.

_Why did they turn all the power off?_ Parker thought as he ran blindly through the unfamiliar-feeling corridors and hallways that were once so familiar, calling Grace's name over and over. He stopped, his breath coming in short bursts.

"_The Na'vi have excellent night-vision_," a voice in his head whispered, sounding distinctly like Grace during one of her lengthy lectures about the blue-coloured natives. "_It gives them an advantage over the humans._"

Then, it was just quiet, almost eerily so. Parker could hear his breathing— shallow and laboured from his run through the silent base. He was out of shape, most of his exorcise being golf, and only that in short breaks between paperwork and mealtimes. He held his sides, and a cramp made him hiss in pain— the noise sounded far louder than it should have, and Parker shivered.

He walked down the hallway, putting his arm out to fell for the wall. His footsteps echoed in the darkness, making have the uncomfortable feeling that anyone could hear him. _Or see me,_ he thought, remembering Grace's tidbit about the Na'vi's night-vision. He tried to rid himself of the feeling of being followed, but he just couldn't shake it; there were goosebumps up his arms and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.

His wandering fingers traced the wall as he walked, feeling all the crevices in the plaster and metal and glass. Eventually, as his breathing returned to normal, he stumbled upon a light switch. He flicked it, and was momentarily blinded by the sudden onslaught to his retinas. Closing his eyes for a moment, he let the pupils adjust to the new light, and then slowly reopened his eyes, blinking several times to clear the white dots that clouded his vision.

Of course. The lab.

The entire science lab seemed dead and unnatural without the buzz of ambient techs and scientists to fill the void with their presence. The place reeked of Grace, from the feminine touches— a plant, some kind of alien orchid, on her desk— to the scientific and preciseness of the layout and atmosphere. Parker's heart thudded loudly in his chest as his eyes scanned the room; if Grace was not here, where would she be?

He swallowed past the lump forming in his throat and took a few steps into the room, his brain working overtime to compensate for his body's lack of response. Oh, where could she be? It was almost cruel of Sully to be doing this to him, acting as though she were dead. She couldn't be dead. She was probably just resting after a stressful couple of days.

With that thought it mind, he trotted off in the direction of her quarters, not even bothering to turn on the hallway's lights, as the vague glow of the lab guided him through the familiar course.

Two lefts. A right. Sixth door on the left.

The light from the retreating room had just about dimmed out when he reached the correct door, his hand finding the keypad and quickly typing in the code he had long ago memorised. The door _whooshed_ open with a gust of distilled air, like a mummy's tomb being reopened after hundreds of years.

The world seemed to stop turning for a moment when he reached for that place on the wall the held the light switch and flicked it like he had the other. His brain stilled, and his heart skipped a beat. Her bed was made. Uncertain feet carried him forward, and he could feel his lip trembling as he reached down to trace his fingers along the edge of her immaculately folded sheet, crisp and clean and undisturbed.

Parker didn't even realised he was crying until he tasted the salty liquid pool in the corner of his mouth. A trembling hand wiped away the offending wetness, the tear of a broken heart.

She wasn't there. She never had been there, not since Site 26. Her room was the same way she had left it three months before, when she requested her team's transfer to the Halleluiah Mountains.

If she wasn't _here_, if she wasn't sleeping peacefully on _this mattress_, if she wasn't curled beneath _this blanket_— Parker's façade crumbled, and a sob racked his body as he grabbed her headboard for support— then she was really gone. He sunk slowly onto her bed, his hands groping of her pillow in a desperate need to have something of hers. He clutched it to his chest like a child would a doll, sobbing into the soft surface and overwhelmed by the intense scent of _Grace_.

_Lavender,_ his brain registered as his body continued to disintegrate, breaking down in the most humanly way possible. _Grace's hair always smelled like lavender._

He didn't know how long he stayed there, curled on her bed and cuddling her pillow in his arms until the tears stopped and the shock set it. A warm hand on his shoulder made him look up in surprise, meeting saddened brown eyes that mirrored his own.

"Patel," he acknowledged, vaguely remembering Grace's colleague— her favourite little worker-bee, her assistant, her _friend_. "She—" His voice cracked. "She's really gone?" His voice was small and innocent, like it had been once long ago; before the war, before Pandora, before the RDA, when he had just been Parker Jeremy Selfridge, the lonely son of a constantly travelling businessman.

Dr. Patel slowly nodded, his eyes sympathetic. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said, and as mechanical as the words were, and always had been, it was the one time that Parker believed them.

The doctor hadn't been sorry when he told Parker that his mother had passed, the police officer hadn't been sorry when he came to the door with the family's cat limp in his arms, and the letter he had received from the RDA sure as _hell_ hadn't been sorry when it delivered the news of his father's death, but Dr. Patel was truly sorry when he said those words to Parker, because he _knew_ what he had lost. He _knew _what the world was missing out on without Grace Augustine in it, what wonders she could have discovered, what people she could have helped. He _knew_ how wonderful Grace had been, how smart, how funny, how determined. And so he was allowed to feel sorry for Parker's loss, because the loss was his own as well.

Parker wiped his cheeks determinedly, ridding himself of the tears on his face. "Yeah, so am I," he said, gently placing the pillow aside. "I'm sorry for..." He was going to repeat the words to Dr. Patel, but he realised that wasn't who he was sorry for. "I'm sorry for Grace," were the words he chose. If he could have taken her place, he would have. If he could have taken away her pain, he would have. But he didn't, and now all he felt was sorry.

* * *

It was strange, leaving Pandora. Parker's eyes roamed over the barren landscape of the base's landing dock, the concrete wasteland he had once loved and treasured. His eyes flickered to the wall, beyond which he could see the dark outlines of giant trees, lush foliage that Grace had loved with all her heart, right until the end. She died fighting for something he could have given her, and the guilt was overwhelming. _If he'd only taken a second to notice..._

He marched slowly in line with the others as they were led towards the hulking machine that would be their home for the next five years. He wouldn't remember the ride, of course, since he'd be in cryostasis the entire time, but he'd still be in it for five years. Asleep. Dreaming.

And maybe that was what scared him the most. Since he had learned of Grace's death, not twenty-four hours before, he hadn't been able to shut his eyes. Images of Grace, of her smile, her hair, her beautiful green eyes; they haunted him, taunting him, because he knew he'd never see the real thing again, and it broke him over and over to know that.

His feet trudged slowly along the concrete pad as they were led like criminals, like livestock, like something evil and inhuman, with their hands bound and their masks on. Na'vi and Avatar guards prodded them in the right direction if they dared to stray from the path they had to take, lined up like cattle to the slaughter.

Just before he had to step up onto the metal of the ramp, they stopped the line again as they had been doing periodically, waiting for the ones before him to be put to sleep in their cryostasis chambers before putting more onto the ship. _One last look before it's all gone, a distant memory,_ his mind reminded him, and he imprinted the scene to memory, the ships, the Na'vi.

Parker began to shuffle up the ramp when prompted, his shoes scuffing along the metal dejectedly. He lifted his gaze and Jake met his eyes— the eyes of a lost soul— before he disappeared into the semi-dark hull of the massive ship. He was led to a chamber by one of the scientists who would be remaining, and she undid his bonds before he climbed into the cramped space.

"Thanks," he murmured as she adjusted the tubes that could be fitted to his face to provide him with a steady oxygen supply. An act of kindness was not what he ever expected to be shown to him in this kind of situation, and it made him feel almost normal again. She smiled and him and warned him that there would be a pinch when she inserted the IV, but he hardly felt it at all.

She waited until Parker's eyelids were drooping before she shut the compartment's door, giving him a small smile just before she did so. He drowsily smiled back. She was pretty with beautiful green eyes that reminded him of Grace's. The drug slowly overtook him, and his eyelids fluttered closed. A dark warmth enveloped him, and he was gone.

* * *

"_Oh, yeah? What's so special about it?"_

_Grace grinned sheepishly, riffling through the dozens of loose notes scattered about her desk. "See?" She shoved one of the papers under his nose, still smiling excitedly. "Isn't it just the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"_

_Parker looked down at the paper, brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to make sense of the sloppy, hasty handwriting. There were lots of numbers and words he didn't understand, and several places the ink of her old-fashioned pen was smudged and illegible. "You can actually _read _this?" he asked sceptically, cocking an eyebrow at her._

_Grace made a noise of disgust and snatched her work back, running her eyes over the messy scrawl. "Sure. I'll just have to type it up later." She shook her head, dropping the paper back onto her desk. "The point it, this plant isn't like anything I've ever seen before. It has neural pathways, Parker. Think about it: this plant is like a _brain_. How amazing is that? It might even be able to _think_, have cognitive responses." _

_She leaning it close to the little growth, her eyes looking at it lovingly, as if the thing were her own child, rather than a plant that maybe had a brain. It looked like every other plant to Parker— perhaps a little more alien, but still a plant. It had big flat green leaves with a light dusting of tiny white fibres, almost like fur covering them, and a thick darker green stalk. Its flower was unremarkable; pretty, but unremarkable. He'd seen a dozen little white flowers before. Maybe they hadn't had tiny white wriggling _things_ growing out of the middle, but still. It was just a plant._

_But the way that Grace looked at it so lovingly made his heart melt a little, and he didn't even care that she had woken him up in the middle of the night just to show him her discovery. He put an arm around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her cheek and whispered, "It's beautiful, baby."_

_She lit up visibly; her eyes were alight with warmth when she turned to him, a smile across her lips. He smiled back and hugged her, breathing in the intoxicating flowery scent of her hair. _

"_Come on," he chuckled, leading her by the shoulder out of the lab and back towards her quarters. "Let's get you to bed, huh? You look beat."_

_She punched him in the shoulder lightly, but nodded in agreement with a long, tired yawn._

_She stopped outside her door and looked at him, the admiration in her eyes even more evident than the tiredness. "Thanks, Park. I know this isn't really your thing, but..." She leaned in and kissed him slowly, pressing her forehead to his. "Thanks."_

* * *

"_Parker?"_

_The tininess of her voice surprised him. Grace was always confident, determined, strong; he looked down at her, his eyes filled with worry. She shook her head quickly, placing a hand firmly against his chest and snuggling deeper into the crook of his arm. He appreciated these little moments even more than he normally would have because he knew she wasn't the kind of girl to lay around in post-coital bliss and cuddle and have pillow-talk._

"_It's not anything bad, I promise."_

_He relaxed a little and tightened his grip on her waist. "What's on your mind, babydoll?"_

_Grace chuckled, lifting her hand from his chest to smack him lightly before returning it to its place. "I've just been thinking. You know how Dunn shot himself?" _

_Parker blanched a little, remembering being told of the event quite clearly. "Yeah?"_

"_Don't ever do that, okay?"_

_He looked down at her again, concerned. "Why on earth would I try to kill myself? I've got a great job, a great girl, and everything is going wonderfully!" He sat up, jostling her so she had to sit up too. "What on earth made you think I would do something like that?"_

"_Nothing," Grace said quickly, shaking her head again so her fiery red hair flew back and forth and all over the place. "I just... I don't want you to get hurt." It was the closest thing to an '_I love you'_ that she'd ever said to him, and it made him grin like an idiot. _

"_Okay. I won't get hurt."_

"_I mean it," she said seriously, glaring him down like the determined, fire-breathing woman she was. "There are many dangers on Pandora!" She pushed him down gently and settled back in beside him, quickly putting her cold toes beneath his warm calf. _

"_I know," Parker reminded her. "You've told me."_

"_Yeah, well, there are." She paused, closing her eyes. "I think one of the subtlest dangers is that you come to love it too much," she said in a near-whisper, almost as if she were afraid of actually saying it. "I never want to leave this place." She sighed, opening her eyes again and looking up at him, her mouth set in a frown. "Have you ever loved something so much you'd do anything to keep it?"_

_Parker thought seriously about the question, his mind going over all the things he'd ever loved, everything he'd ever cared about. Grace jumped to the top of the list for reasons he almost couldn't fathom, they were so beyond his grasp. He looked down at those searching green eyes and smiled, nodding slightly. _

"_Yeah," he said, closing his eyes and pressing a kiss to her temple. "Yeah, I have."_

* * *

Parker's eyes flickered open, his chest contracting in fear. Where was he? Why was this place so small? Where was Grace?

Instead of waking up next to the love of his life, he woke up in a rectangular box with the strange sensation of weightlessness. It took him a moment to remember where he was, a moment where he panicked and almost called her name. He took a deep, shaky breath instead, all his memories bombarding him as they came to the surface.

A tear slid down his cheek. Grace was dead. It didn't feel like he hadn't seen her in five minutes, let alone five _years_. He'd spent years just dreaming of her, of their past, of his love, and his heart ached so much he felt as though he couldn't breathe. He pressed a hand to his chest, trying to hold his heart inside, because it sure _felt_ as though it was trying to escape.

"I'm so sorry, baby," he whispered, more tears sliding down his face pathetically. "I'm so sorry, Grace."

There was a _clunk_, then a hiss, and his chamber was opened. Parker frantically rubbed the tears away, pretending to rub his eyes into wakefulness with an extremely fake and exaggerated yawn.

"Good morning, sleepin' beauty," a very masculine voice laughed, barely sparing a glance at the newly awakened administrator before moving on to the next person waiting to be released. Parker's eyes snapped open, and he pulled himself free of the box quickly, fighting back the nauseated feeling in his empty stomach.

They were landing on Earth. It was time to face the music, so to speak. He sighed, trying to right himself in the strange, gravity-less environment where he found himself. There was a part of Parker Selfridge that hadn't really returned from Pandora, but he was the only one who knew that. Part of him was left on the living, breathing moon; and that part of him was buried six feet under a blossoming native tree just outside the clearing of the Tree of Souls. That part of him was his heart, of course; and who can live without a heart?

The next few days were hell for Parker.

There was a lot of explaining to higher-ups, a lot of reports, a lot of interviews and yelling and people who were generally upset with him. Parker was upset, too— didn't they see how miserable he was? How broken? If they did pick up on his depression, it was just assumed that he was upset over the loss of profit; all the unobtanium that had been lost because of the war, the resources wasted on the Pandora Project, the scolding and the pay cut he was getting as punishment.

But that wasn't it at all. He had just (or at least, it felt like _just_) lost someone very important to him. But they didn't know that.

It was about two weeks after landing that the package showed up at his door. The stamp said it was from the RDA, and he almost didn't want to open it. What on earth would he want with RDA property? He wanted to forget they ever existed. He wanted to forget that _she_ ever existed. It was hard, but he was trying learn how to forget and move on. It was his way of coping, pretending it had never happened.

But curiosity got the better of him. It was one of the qualities Grace had admired in him, before all the shit that went down went down. So he opened the package, his face set in a permanent grimace as he slashed past the duct tape that held the cardboard box together. He angrily tore back the flaps, but stopped when he saw its contents.

In the box is picture frame containing a snapshot of him and Grace, grinning at a Christmas party; a _World's Best Golfer _mug with a little chip out of the handle; a bundle of clothes, neatly folded in the bottom; a box of Titleists' golf balls, only half full; a long brown box. His hands were shaking as he opened the box, revealing what he already knew must be inside.

Parker carefully took the putter from the box, weighing it in his hands. He had always suspected Grace had been the one to so kindly leave it as a Christmas gift; she had been the only one he told about his secret passion for the game, after all. He'd never called her out for it, and he'd never said thank you. She probably went to her grave thinking he didn't know it was from her.

A note in the bottom of the box surprised him. He took it and unfolded the little paper, his eyes widening a little. Hadn't he thrown this out?

It was, of course, the same little note that had been left with his gift. The simple, "_Merry Christmas, Parker_," brought a new onslaught of tears to his eyes, because he definitely knew that was her handwriting, now. Back then he hadn't been sure. Now he was.

"Thank you, Grace," he murmured, feeling like a sappy idiot at being so happy over finding such a tiny treasure. As much as he hated the RDA, and he did, because they took his Grace away from him, he couldn't help but be thankful for the little piece he had been given back.

He took the little note and put it someplace safe, returning to his small living room and picking up the discarded objects that he had left lying on the floor. The picture of them was set carefully on his bedside table, and his clothes neatly put away in his drawers. He placed his mug on the floor, tipped on its side, and grabbed a ball from the half-empty box.

Maybe they really had been doomed from the start. Maybe they'd never really had a chance, because the circumstances they were thrown into had prevented it, or maybe life just got in the way. Maybe they were just too different, and their personalities would have clashed anyway. Maybe no matter the circumstances, they just wouldn't have worked out.

There were always a lot of _maybe_'s in life, and a lot more _what if_'s. But as Parker lined up his shot and gently putted that ball across the tiles, he thought maybe they would have been perfect for each other, and when the ball cleanly jumped into the cup with a resounding _clink,_ he knew he was never going to forget his fiery redhead, because love doesn't care about _maybe_'s and _what if_'s.

They may have been doomed from the start, Parker mused, but at least they'd had Pandora.


End file.
